In 1994, California was in the throes of an economic recession, its unemployment rate increasing rapidly as it continued to bleed jobs in once flourishing industries. At the same time, it had the largest population of undocumented residents of any state in the country, already up to 1.3 million and getting larger.

Alma Alvarado was home alone when she found out she got into UCLA. She was living in a small apartment in Planada, California, just outside Merced. She was often there by herself, because her older brother, the only other member of her household, worked long hours. On this day, she sat alone at home again, and opened her laptop with her heart in her throat.

“My family came here in pieces.”
Valerie* sits at a table on the Kerckhoff patio, folding and refolding the napkin she had just used for lunch.

Reporter Natalie Delgadillo, opinion columnist Ryan Nelson and photojournalist Angie Wang spent eleven months piecing together the full picture of what it means to be an undocumented student in the United States, from California, where policies are comparatively lenient, to Georgia, where students are subject to some of the harshest higher education policies in the country.

I didn’t think it would be hard to write this column.
Maybe that’s odd. Writing something that accurately captures what I’ve learned during my time writing for the Daily Bruin – that explains what it feels like to be here, right now, standing with one foot inside Kerckhoff 118 and the other out – probably should never have seemed easy.

Dear President Napolitano and the University of California Board of Regents,
We are 521 University of California alumni who are deeply concerned about the safety of Jewish students at our alma mater.

Barbara Sahagun’s mother left for Guatemala on April 23 expecting to be back no more than a week later, finally a legal permanent resident of the United States.

To the UCLA community:
As part of the first annual Faculty Day of Action on April 16, 2015, UCLA faculty and graduate students are taking a stand with survivors of sexual violence by demanding more transparency and accountability in the way our university handles Title IX cases.

Over the course of the past few quarters at UCLA, one thing has become abundantly clear: Our campus climate is anything but perfect. Between the politicization of different identities and tokenization of certain experiences, it unfortunately has become increasingly difficult for us as students to have faith in the sincerity of others.

Writing about trauma is a formidable task.
As journalists, our professional practice is based in skepticism; reporters are never supposed to take anyone’s word for anything and have to verify facts to the point of exhaustion.